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Trump to Ship Potentially Sick Americans to Foreign Country

It’s a radical departure from what past administrations have done.

The Trump administration has decided to send Americans who may have contracted Ebola to Kenya instead of monitoring their health and treating them as needed in the U.S.

That plan, the New York Times reported on Tuesday, comes nearly two weeks after the announcement of an outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where more than 200 people have died in just 11 days. The Trump administration’s cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Centers for Disease Control, experts say, worsened the situation in the developing African country.

The administration’s tactic of keeping potentially infected Americans out of the country follows its move to prevent certain foreigners from entering due to the outbreak.

Last week, the administration invoked Title 42 to bar entry to immigrants and legal permanent residents who had been in either the Congo, Uganda or South Sudan within the previous three weeks. Title 42 is the same public health law used during COVID-19 to restrict migrant border crossings from Mexico into the U.S.

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The plan is also an outlier compared to Trump’s predecessors. During the 2014-15 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, for instance, six Americans who contracted the disease there were brought to the U.S. for treatment: three health workers, a freelance cameraman for NBC, a Doctors Without Borders worker, and one unidentified American who was treated in Atlanta.

According to the Times, the Trump administration at first planned to just monitor potentially infected Americans in Kenya and move any with symptoms to Europe. Those included an American doctor who was sent to Germany, and six other Americans who were flown to Germany and the Czech Republic.

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But now, treatment will also take place in Kenya, two people with knowledge of the planning said. A Trump administration official told the paper that a quarantine and treatment facility is being set up as a joint effort by the Departments of State, Defense, and Health and Human Services.

Additionally, Public Health Service officers are being trained before they’re sent to Kenya.

When reached for comment, a Trump administration official told the Daily Beast in part that the Kenya facility “is designed to provide access to high-quality care for Americans who would need to quickly get out of DRC and quarantine without the risks of a lengthy transport back to the U.S.”

“Time is of the essence for Ebola patients, and this facility will enable Americans in the region who contract Ebola to receive lifesaving care as quickly as possible without 12-plus hours of medevac flight time,” they added.

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The World Health Organization has declared the Ebola outbreak—already the third-largest on record—a “public health emergency of international concern.”

Meanwhile, no deaths from the Hantavirus outbreak, first identified in early April on the Dutch cruise ship MV Hondius, have been reported since May 2. As of last Friday, there were 12 cases and three deaths.

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